Chrome OS comes with a bottom tray or ‘shelf’. Notably, the right corner is somewhat similar to what you might have seen or used on Windows. However, unlike Windows, it is very limited when it comes to usability. For instance, the clock that is displayed sadly doesn’t present you with a calendar upon clicking it. However, a new update in the future might change that to fulfill many users' requests.

A commit spotted at the Chromium Gerrit suggests that a ‘simple calendar widget’ is coming to Chrome OS very soon. The information comes from Android Police, which has also been tracking a new ChromeOS feature called ‘Scalable Status Area’. This is reportedly an update for the shelf that would offer more information, including important notifications and the ability to show the date right next to the clock, as well as a mini-calendar when you click on it.

Scalable Status Area: Put date change into later launch.

We decided to put the changes in the date into later launch since this change is consistent with the calendar widget feature. Moved the change to a different feature flag.

There is not a lot of information when it comes to how the calendar widget will work or how it will look like. Still, it is being said that the change will be a part of a broader update to move the date into the tray, which isn’t necessarily dependent on the Scalable Status Area feature. It will also be interesting to see if the new calendar widget will offer the ability to show your schedule, event, or reminders from Google Calendar.

The folks over at Android Police recently also uncovered new commits on the Chromium Gerrit that suggest that Google is working on deeply integrating Google Photos into the file manager's navigation pane, thus allowing users to access their uploaded photos within the file manager quickly. The Google Photos shortcut should show up on the navigation pane after installing the app on a ChromeOS device.